I guess I wouldn't be able to make that picture in PS without excessive use of smudge and burn//dodge. Is there a way in PS to draw stuff with primarily the brush tool that doesn't involve switching the brush style like 200 times? I don't really know good PS technique so if I make something cool it is really slow.

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"Each night alone I dream, that I'm a rebel Roller Queen‼I'll be a star that shines, I can make the whole world mine‼"

Tools:Smudge can sometimes be useful, but you don't need it.Burn/Dodge never use these, never ever, ever

When people start with PS they use those alot, so did I.But after a while you learn why its a mistake to rely on them all the time.

Layer opacity:Making things darker:So that shadow area I made by- creating a new layer- paint 100% opacity black, or maybe gray, with a bit of blue in it- then on the layer, you can adjust the opacity with a slider, till it looks rightI also painted on it with a low opacity brush, its been over worked really

Making things lighter:same thing but use a lighter color, adjust layer opacity.

Brush Opacity:Just paint it with a brush, that has a low opacity setting on the brush, Like 2% to 15%, then scrub over the area till it looks good.

Try using HSB color picker sliders.HueSaturation, you rarely need full saturation B (Black I guess) Value, other programs call this HSV, to adjust light and dark of the same color

Brush style:Just use the simple round Paintbrush and Pencil brushes- adjust the size as needed- adjust the opacity After you block out an area at 100%, you'll be at 2% to 60% most of the time.You will need to adjust the brush size and opacity 200 times, there is no getting around this.

Draw some boxes

Profit !!!

Pro artists use a stylus on a screen and can use the pressure sensitivity to alter the brush size and opacity.The tools above will allow you to work with a mouse.

Burn and dodge are okay for specific very limited applications - basically whenever you don't mind blowing out your saturation all to shit. These occur rarely in nature, so you're best off leaving them to the professionals.

In Photoshop you can stick with just the Brush if you set up your brush palette right (Brush Presets -> dropdown -> Preset Manager) and use your hotkeys.

stubby wrote:I should do screencasts of my photoshop work one of these days.

I'd like to see that.

Hot KeysI use them in Lightwave because everything is buried in menus and panels.I never started using them in PS because everything is more accessible.But I really should be using them in PS. I suppose if it was my job I would already be using them.

Wacom is always the brand to go with, but after that a lot depends on how professional you want to be, and how portable. If you're going with a tablet, anything bigger than the Intuos Pro Small is kind of a pain in the ass. The Bamboo / Intuos is kind of too small though, but YMMV. If you're going with a full Cintiq then you want the biggest one of course.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.